


side stories (twritny)

by snugglepup



Series: together we'll ring in the new year [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Bullying, F/M, Gen, Gore, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Physical Abuse, Psychological Warfare, Self-Esteem Issues, Sibling Bonding, Side Story, Swordfighting, Together We'll Ring In The New Year
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-10
Updated: 2014-09-20
Packaged: 2018-02-16 20:18:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2283204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snugglepup/pseuds/snugglepup
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a series of short side stories for my foolishly ambitious fic project Together We'll Ring In The New Year. None of these stories are necessary to follow the main fic, but reading them will probably give some insight into things and characters you wouldn't have gotten otherwise. Really, this is a dumping ground for all the little New Year scenes that I can't fit into the main fic. That's about the size of it in a nutshell! The list of relationships and characters and additional tags will keep growing as the side stories cover more ground.</p><p>EACH 'CHAPTER' HERE WILL COME WITH A WARNING IF IT CONTAINS SPOILERS, AND IF SO, WHAT MAIN FIC CHAPTER SHOULD BE REACHED BEFORE THE AUTHOR CAN RECOMMEND READING IT.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Failsafe Procedure Activated

**Author's Note:**

> \- - SPOILER WARNING: DO NOT READ BEFORE FINISHING CHAPTER 16 OF THE MAIN FIC - -

_their memory's like a train, you can see it getting smaller as it pulls away_

_and the things you can't remember tell the things that you forget_

_that history puts a saint in every dream_

[ _tom waits - time_ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAB4uGGquX4)

* * *

The smell of smoke and ozone is choking you and you don't have any idea how the hell you got here or where 'here' even is. The world reels like you've been drugged or something, or just woke up from a really, really nasty daymere; you've got a migraine again, which wouldn't be surprising, but this one is seriously bad, maybe the worst you've ever even dealt with, and it takes a minute or two to adjust to the pain well enough to do anything. So you do the reasonable thing any troll would do when waking up in the middle of nowhere without an explanation: you look around.

Okay, yep. You're in the middle of nowhere, that's great, and apart from the occasional dying tree the only thing around you is the smoldering ruin of what must have recently been a hive. That's kind of ominous, but you've seen worse; what's one wrecked hive that looks small enough to have belonged to a bronze or burgundy troll after you watch an entire hivestem collapsing in the distance?

But there's something about this particular middle of nowhere that doesn't sit right with you, and when you lift yourself into the air a bit, ignoring the hideous spikes of pain through your pan (so it was overuse of your psionics after all, somehow, and not just the average shit), you can see holes all over the place. Traps, maybe? Except they aren't hidden at all; if you'd been close to one you'd have seen it in two milliseconds. Who the hell digs a bunch of holes around their hive for no reason --

oh                                                                                                  

but

no but that's

oh no oh fuck oh no

And then you're on the ground again, running to the ruined hive, lifting random boards and smaller chunks of broken, smoking wood and hurling them out of the way, and you tell yourself over and over that you must be wrong, but you know better than almost anybody what it looks like when a psionic blast hits a structure.

Underneath goddamned near everything else, you see her. Her dorky Inndie Jhones hat's scorched and somehow intact beneath a bunch of overturned dirt and rocks that must have actually been beneath the hive. One of her eyes is shut and the other is open, staring upward, face locked forever into confusion and betrayal. Her clothes are ragged and filled with dust and ash, her body burned past the dermis and clear through bone in places. Burgundy tears are still almost wet on her cheeks.

What's definitely wet is the blood pouring from one corner of her mouth, puddled beneath her, and staining the table leg that's stuck straight through her abdomen, the first six inches of which is loosely wrapped in loops of dark red digestive tubing and the rest of which is tightly grasped in blood-soaked hands.

You spend a few minutes puking into a nearby pile of rubble.

What happened? What did you _do_ why did you _do_ it you knew you were fucking crazy so did everyone but you were never crazy like _this_ oh god oh _god_

You can't bring yourself to use the same psionics that killed your matesprit, not right now, maybe never again. No, that's wrong. You'll use them one more time to make things as close to right as they'll ever be, but there's one last thing to do before you fly as high as you can and then let go. Something you don't deserve now and probably never did, even if you've done it so many times before.

So it's with your bare hands, tears, and gruesome effort that you get the piece of furniture pulled free and close her one open eye. This may have been a mistake for you because the extra bits of fresh and dripping viscera that come loose almost make you throw up again, but she at deserves so much better than to rot impaled on a piece of fucking wood. Oh god, the _force_ that must have been involved to make that happen, oh _god._

You wipe more tears from your own face but it's really kind of pointless because more just keep coming. Kneeling over what's left of her now, burgundy seeping into your skirt, you take a hand that should be warm but is instead hideously cold in your own, and you try to make yourself do this, because some part of you can't let go without it. More and more crazy. At least two minutes from now you'll never be able to kill someone you pity again.

So you kiss her, corpse cradled in one arm, hand still held in the other, and everything inside of you lurches with another wave of the brutal reality that _this happened, this is real, and somehow it is your fault._

And then words in every color imaginable burn themselves into your thinkpan.

 

* * *

**F A I L S A F E - - P R O C E D U R E - - A C T I V A T E D**

**C O M M E N C I N G - - D R E A M S E L F - - C A L I B R A T I O N**

**! ! - - C O N T A M I N A T I O N - - D E T E C T E D - - ! !**

**A N A L Y S I S - - A N D - - R E S T O R A T I O N - - I N I T I A T E D**

**D R E A M S E L F - - P U R I F I C A T I O N - - C O M P L E T E**

**C O N S C I O U S N E S S - - T R A N S F E R - - A N D - - V E S S E L - - S U B S T I T U T I O N - - C O M P L E T E**

 

* * *

 

You really have gone insane. You've gone insane, you've murdered your matesprit, and now you're hallucinating so vividly it actually hurts. The dead fingers laced with yours squeeze tight.

Wait, what?

"Sollux?" Aradia Megido says, confused, with the same smile she's always had when you show up unexpectedly, and when you look down, she's spotless. Even the bloodstains and singes are missing. "Sollux, what's wrong? Did something happen?" Everything is wavering and going dim and when you collapse on top of her she's warm, she's warm like she ought to be, and this is the last thing you feel before your mind splits in two and nothing in your life ever makes sense again. "Sollux!"

The last thing you _think_ is just as simple as what you feel: _i_ _f this part's the hallucination then please, please let it never end._


	2. Say Uncle (Part 1/3)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can be read more or less safely at any point in the main story, or without reading the main story at all.

_death comes in threes, you're soon to see the second coming_

_but dad told me i was destined for something_

_despite the fact that i felt like less than nothing_

_he said "fuck 'em, gotta make 'em say uncle"_

_sage francis - say uncle_

* * *

 

"Pick it up," your brother says, almost serene, and in this moment you would set aside _irony_ to see what he looks like when you make him bleed. Instead of doing something impossible, you stalk across the rooftop and grab your katana, whipping around and snapping into a defensive stance; he can't move like Bro, but he doesn't have to. You've got a second to breathe, apparently, because he hasn't already moved on you again. You know, you _know_ that if you go all out on the offense, give this everything you've fucking got, it'll have to be good enough, enough to land a hit, land a scratch, scrape his clothes, make him stumble, _anything_.

It isn't good enough. The arcs of his blade look almost lazy and to anyone but a master swordsman, it might look like he's toying with you. Of course the son of a bitch _is_ toying with you, but it doesn't have anything to do with _that_. You're _fast_ , hell, you're faster than he is, but it doesn't matter, it never fucking matters because those lazy movements always somehow leave him in a position to block. To throw him off you mix up the flow of this sad excuse for a strife with a new feint you're particularly proud of that almost literally has to leave him blindsided, and you'd swear that it _does_. Less than an eighth of a second passes before your real attack, a cut at an angle he can't possibly parry.

Dirk doesn't parry. He doesn't _bother_ to parry, just tilts himself slightly away. When your katana whiffs by what must be less than half an inch he strikes back, a vicious upward cut that almost knocks the weapon out of your bruised hands again. You reply by trying to use the momentum to bring your left leg around and kick a leg out from under him and he replies by casually hopping over it and abruptly lunging forward with a stab that actually makes your hair blow back a little with sheer force. Finally, the bastard's gotten overconfident enough to leave himself open for a split second and you're halfway to slashing his face when something hits you hard in the temple, sends your shades flying, flashes black and white and red stars everywhere in your head. A loud clatter is probably your katana hitting the roof.

When you know where you are again, hell, _who_ you are, he damn near hit you so hard he knocked some memories loose, you try to figure out what the fuck could have happened, and then you see him looking down at you -- no, down _on_ you, call something what it is for once in your goddamned life -- twirling his katana's sheath idly between his fingers like a baton. In the dim light you can still see red glistening on the wood. He threw that insane stab at you with _one hand?_

"You're too fast, lil' man," he says. "Doesn't matter how many times you can slash in a second if you don't understand what all of those slashes are supposed to do."

You want him to look at you with contempt, to spit on you or call you a pathetic excuse for a fighter. You want him to tell you you're making progress, extend a hand to help you up. You want him to look like he feels anything about you at all.

But this is Dirk, and if he feels anything he sure as hell doesn't let you know it.

"Don't fucking call me that," you say, hand coming away wet from hair matted with your blood. "Only Bro gets to call me that."

"So make me stop." He taps his foot on the ground for a few seconds. "C'mon lil' man. If you don't like it, then _make me stop._ " It's hard to see right; sometimes it looks like there's more than one of him there and you wish you could tell whether that's something he's doing or whether you've got a concussion.

You don't even see his foot move, just feel it sink into your gut and turn you into a curled up ball of pain with the taste of puke in your mouth. A small whimper slips out of you somehow and for a few seconds you forget all about him; there's only room for your _own_ contempt for yourself. When you can breathe again you see him staring down impassively for a moment before he nods his head off to your side.

Blinking through a slowly dissipating fog, you can see your katana lying maybe ten feet away. Holy shit, did he knock you that far? Your stomach is a wildfire and it feels like you should be spitting blood. Dirk exhales in a certain disappointed way that only he and Rose can pull off; the difference is that Rose isn't interested in making you hate yourself, and you're not really sure if Dirk is interested in anything _else_.

"Pick it up," Dirk says, and when you don't move, he says it again. "Pick. It. Up."

Some part of you knows you should be going to a hospital to get your head checked out, feels the blood running down your face. Looking up at Dirk, you watch him continue to look down on you. He shakes his head almost imperceptibly and you dream of beating him until he cracks and not stopping until you see tears on his face. It's only ten feet to the sword, just ten feet of aching kaleidoscope vision. A few seconds of pained crawling gets you there.

Your name is Dave Strider, you are thirteen years old, and someday you will be good enough.

You pick up the sword.


	3. Say Uncle (Part 2/3)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continued from Part 1. Can be read more or less safely at any point in the main story, or without reading the main story at all.

_even shackles have shackles, that's a shadow reference_

_we like to break the chains of darkness and we all ask for seconds_

_it's the heart of the oliver twisted calling on all mystics_

_sage francis - say uncle_

* * *

 

Breathe, keep steady, and more than anything else do _not_ let yourself pass out. The blood's stopped running, crusted in your hair. The concussion is still right here doing its best to overstay its welcome. Fucking concussions don't know how to take a hint. Dirk is... you don't know where he is, actually, the bastard ditched you when you finally ran out of steam and just fucked off to do whatever it is he actually does. This isn't your first head trauma and it won't be your last. You've got this.

Five hours in front of the TV, pinching yourself when you start to nod off, going over techniques again and again in your head, and it's four thirteen AM, forty two seconds, and seven hundred sixty six milliseconds when the living room window clicks and slides open. Fuck. Fuck fuck _fuck_ you can't let him see you like this because he'll _know_ he knows goddamned everything, but if you try to get up, run for your room, he'll just be there already waiting for you. If Striders cried your eyes might be full of tears right now. Thankfully they don't.

There's a faint brush of displaced air that ruffles your shirt and then Bro is sitting next to you on the couch. You don't say a word. Bro doesn't say anything, either; just flips on the TV and is suddenly holding a controller and starting up... is this an actual _good_ video game? What the fuck? You were pretty sure the apartment didn't even _have_ games with an aggregate review score higher than two out of ten. The game's a shooter, looks like, which is even weirder.

Then he hands you the other controller you didn't notice he had. Man, come on, haven't you gotten thrashed enough tonight? It's still all you can do to stay awake. He's player one, obviously, so he gets menu control, and you watch as a highlighted cursor moves down to DEATHMATCH.

And then it goes a notch lower to SPLIT SCREEN CO-OP and there's a loud gunshot when he accepts. _What the fuck_ is what you want to say, but you don't say anything, because that's not how you roll, not how Bro rolls, but you've got a goddamned concussion and when the game is prompting character selection and your side of the screen is waiting for someone to press the start button and get things going already, you can't help but look over and up at him for a second.

Sometimes it's hard to know what's going on when everyone is wearing opaque shades. You press start.

Focusing on the game isn't easy, especially because you've still got double vision off and on and you feel like you're about to throw up, but it's helping keep you conscious for that exact reason. Fucking up isn't an option. Co-op. With _Bro_. Who gives a shit if it's just a game? This is one way you refuse to let him down, just this one small thing. You're not going to get him killed, so you throw every bit of what's left of your mind into the game. The volume's not so loud that it hurts your head much, but it's loud enough that the gunshots, explosions, and screams are still jarring.

Eventually the sun's almost up and you know you have to just deal with it, hide in your room and draw the shades and hang a blanket over the whole window, you'll have to be awake all day long if you want to make sure you don't black out and maybe die. God, this is gonna be miserable. Maybe John'll be online. Maybe Rose will stop by out of nowhere, she does that sometimes. Maybe some divine being'll take mercy on you and Dirk and Roxy'll swap houses for a while.

Bro pauses the game... and _saves your progress?_

That's what finally breaks you, somewhere inside that you can't identify, because there's only one thing it can mean: nobody bothers saving a game they don't plan on playing again.

"Gonna kill you one of these days, lil' man." His voice is as paradoxically hoarse and smooth as it always is on the rare occasions he actually uses it.

"No shit? Is that what you think? Man, you couldn't be more wrong if you tried and in fact I don't even know what you're talking about because obviously I just hit my head falling down all those fucking stairs and --"

"Break him," Bro says, and you don't move. You don't even blink.

"The fuck does that mean?" He stretches and yawns; he's already up even later than usual.

"It means _break_ him. There's this book --" Book? Bro reads books? "-- classic lit except it's not worthless like most of that bullshit. Called Ender's Game."

"Get to the fucking point already," you snap, and hate yourself just a little bit more.

"Chill, I'm getting there. Protag's a kid, right. Won't bore you with all the details, but there's a part when he just got done beating a bully almost to death and this army dude asks him why he kept hitting him while the asshole was down, why he almost killed the guy when he'd already won. Know what the kid says to him?"

You just wait, because he's gonna tell you either way and after all the hard breathing you've been doing, it kind of hurts to talk.

"Says it was 'cause he didn't want to just win the fight. Wanted to win it and all the fights that would've come after." Okay, that's pretty badass, although you're not sure why you're surprised that Bro likes shit that's badass. That's just common sense.

"So what's that mean for me when I can't even... " _Striders. Don't. Cry._ "... even land one scratch on the son of a bitch? He's the one winning all the fights and he always has been."

"Sure has. You're not Dirk, lil' man. You're not gonna land that scratch any time soon. You know what you're going to do, though?" You try not to wince as you shake your head just a little bit.

Bro looks at you and then does something unthinkable. He pushes up his shades. His eyes aren't like yours and they aren't like Dirk's, either. They must be brown and the lighting's just bad, because they look jet black to you, black like the night sky between the stars is when you're all the way out at Mom's house, like black felt, like the old and permanent safety of a nocturnal existence. Sometimes when you're swapping and it's you and Rose over there you'll lie on the roof together and unthinkably, unimaginably, shut your mouths and just stare up into infinity, at that black felt in between points of light. Those are some of the few moments in your life when you actually feel like a real person. You wish Dirk would fuck off for good and not just for the night. You wish Rose was always around, even if she drives you nuts with her amateur psychoanalysis and ironic Freud shit and overwrought wizardly sagas.

Something hurts all of a sudden and there's an angry red spot on your arm where Bro just flicked it.

"Stay with me, kid," he says. "This is what you're going to do. It's an old saying and it's stupid and you're going to do it anyway." A pause while you try to imagine what in the hell _that_ means. "You're gonna make him say uncle."

"Are you kidding me. We just established he's gonna keep wrecking my shit like I'm an old condemned theater. How am I supposed to 'break' him? How am I supposed to make him do _anything?"_

"Can't nail him with the blade," Bro says, quiet, maybe as serious as you've ever seen him when he's not acting serious for some convoluted exercise in extreme irony. "So you take him down with the rest of yourself. You break him like a shitty katana and you make him say uncle."

" _How,_ " you say, starting to get seriously frustrated, and you almost jump the right the fuck out of your skin when something claps you on the shoulder. A hand. An actual warm blood-filled human hand. There's only one human apart from you in here and suddenly nothing in your entire life makes sense.

When you turn your head back, eyes wide and lost behind dark glass, he's already gone.


	4. Say Uncle (Part 3/3)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continued from Part 2. Can be read more or less safely at any point in the main story, or without reading the main story at all.

_the gravedigger creeps into the crypt, then strips the bed_

_to find agendas that are hidden like pigeon eggs_

_instead he finds nothing, only ink-dipped feathers_

_and a sense perhaps the homie's homing instincts have been severed_

_sage francis - say uncle_

* * *

 

You spend the day in the dark working on remixes and rambling at Rose online, and she helps keep you awake by calling your cell if she goes longer than five minutes without getting a message. Time passes in a miserable crawl, but you're not alone, and even as you're tabbing between Pesterchum and various other software you're trying to make sense of Bro's sage wisdom. You're also not sure if you're trying not to think about that whole encounter or if you never want to forget a millisecond of it ever again.

John does show up off and on but he's busy re-watching Con Air for the trillionth time and cross-examining it to find every specific way in which it is a brilliant movie for a school project. Maybe he'll get an A for effort, at least. Jade's still in some weird place way out in the desert finishing up her need-to-know project for the military.

The weird part of the daylight hours comes when you're desperately messaging anyone and everyone as it gets harder and harder to keep yourself going.

 

turntechGodhead [TG] has begun pestering  gutsyGumshoe [GG]

 

TG: yo crocker hows it rollin

TG: and im not talking about the dough cause we both know that doughs getting rolled like a fuckin katamari on acid

GG: The name is Egbert, you know. I'm not really certain why you keep referring to me this way.

TG: reread my last message climb a bigass mountain to meditate or some shit and the answer will reveal itself in time

GG: I'll take your word for it. How have you been, Dave? You and I don't talk much these days.

TG: fine

TG: you know me when aint shit just peachy

TG: mixin dope beats, listenin to your dork-ass lil bro flip his shit over nic cage, slowly gettin over this concussion, pondering the mysteries of the universe, the usual stuff

GG: Oh gosh! Where did you get a concussion? Were stairs involved?

TG: of course stairs were fuckin involved who do you think i am somebody who isnt falling down stairs every day

GG: Obviously not, but that's not what actually happened, is it? It's not exactly normal to be constantly injured, you know! I don't care if "thats just how striders roll", something is very wrong in that apartment.

TG: girl i do not have a goddamn clue what youre talkin about

TG: why dont we just talk about somethin else like

TG: whatever you talk about i dont know, gimme your version of the events of the cake batter garden hose incident or somethin

GG: It's Dirk again, isn't it.

TG: see above where i mention the zero clues as to whatever it is your talkin about because i sure as

TG: god damn it

TG: of course its fuckin dirk who else would it be

TG: piece of shit kicked my ass up and down the block and then all the way into last week

TG: like i know i shouldnt be complainin on account of i got the best fuckin convoluted clusterfuck of a family in the universe but i think maybe things over here might go smoother if one of my brothers didnt hate my guts and show it by diggin his foot into said guts repeatedly

GG: He doesn't hate you, Dave. I'm not sure if Dirk hates anyone, really. He tries to stay above that sort of tomfoolery.

TG: yeah well ill buy that when i see any evidence like at all in any way whatsoever

GG: Dirk is doing what he always does, which is to say he's repressing his feelings and trying to be the ultimate mysterious ninja. He wants to be like your Bro, but he can't be, because he's not your Bro, he's Dirk Strider.

GG: He can't copy the good things about Bro, because he has his own good things already. All he's been accomplishing lately is making the bad parts of himself worse.

TG: well great so mr perfects apparently actually mr dumbshit that completely fixes my own problem

GG: He loves you. He really does. Dirk is my friend, and I know he's going through a lot right now. Whatever he's doing isn't okay, and I'm sorry. But he doesn't hate you, Dave. I know that for a fact.

TG: i gotta go

TG: not sure what to think of all that but hey who knows

TG: peace

 

turntechGodhead [TG] has ceased pestering  gutsyGumshoe [GG]

 

turntechGodhead [TG] has begun pestering  gutsyGumshoe [GG]

 

TG: yo crocker

GG: Yes?

TG: thanks

 

turntechGodhead [TG] has ceased pestering  gutsyGumshoe [GG]

 

* * *

 

Horizontal cut: blocked -- flash step feinting a backstab, dodge the counter, diagonal cut: blocked -- a rain of blows, relentless, masterful. He takes your finely honed skill and makes you look like an amateur, like an anime protagonist fighting his nemesis for the first time, the curbstomp on hold while he humiliates you without even having to move most of his body.

And then suddenly he's on the attack and he's perfect but you're still the fast one so you block it and your sword snaps in half and blisters your hands as the grip's torn out of them by sheer force.

That wasn't a shitty katana, either. You got this one out of the fridge where it was waiting along with the rest of the quality weapons.

By the time you've managed to get your eyes off the wedge of metal careening along the rooftop, his fist's become best friends with your jaw. Hell, your jaw and your brother's fist have officially become downright matrimonial. It barely even registers in terms of pain, at least at first; just a jarring impact, a crack from your neck that couldn't have been louder if you'd been cracking that neck yourself.

Now you're on the ground, and while you're there Dirk walks over to the AC unit and picks up a spare blade, tosses it to you almost gracefully. You tilt your head and let it land behind you.

"Pick it up," he says.

"Nah, I'm cool," you say, and you think his eyes might have widened just a little bit, because you definitely saw his eyebrows twitch.

"What do you mean, you're 'cool'. Pick up the sword and fight me."

"Nope, don't got the time to waste on chumps who go breakin' perfectly good swords for no reason."

He kicks you and you cough. Everything feels strangely simple, like a lot of things are colliding at the same time and with every complicated piece that clicks together it's looking more and more like they were just one simple thing all along.

"What kind of Strider gives up on a fight, lil' man?"

"I don't know how you expect me to give up on a fight I'm not part of. _Lil' man._ Maybe you oughta go get your head checked out cause you ain't makin' --"

He kicks you again and you feel yourself starting to curl up into a ball.

"-- m-makin' a lick of damn sense. You're the one who's fightin', man. I'm just having a nice night on the roof, you know, watchin' this Dirk dude try way too hard to be like some bizarro version of his Bro --"

Twice this time. If this really was an anime, you'd definitely be spitting blood.

"All I'm doing is trying to have a friendly strife with my little brother," he says. "Like the Strider I --"

"Aw, the fifteen year old prodigy's beatin' the shit outta his thirteen year old kid brother, I bet Bro's real proud of how you're turnin' out, nothin' says Strider like 'lack of honor' --"

Three more. It's hard to talk, hard to think. Something's changed in his posture; before he looked like a swordsman, but now he looks _dangerous._

"Don't. Insult. My. Honor. I'm more of a Strider than you'll ever be. One more word about Bro or my _honor_ and I'll kill you." The point of his sword presses up under your chin just enough to draw blood.

"So kill me then 'cause I just got done lookin' up 'honor' on this online thesaurus and the whole antonym _section_ was a bigass high-res photo of you."

The blade moves, just a little, a shallow cut all around the front half of your neck oozing red.

"I'll kill you," Dirk says, and you chuckle.

"No you won't. You're a bag of fuckin' dicks and a goddamn disgrace to this family but you ain't gonna kill me, now or ever."

The sword moves away just enough to give him leeway to kick you again. You really _might_ have to go to a hospital after this because you can't just wait out internal bleeding the way you did your head injury.

"You know why you ain't gonna kill me?"

"Enlighten me," he says, and gives you some time to think by occupying himself with another barrage of kicks.

"Because I'm your brother and whatever the hell dumbass thing it is you think you're doin' here, you fuckin' love me."

The next kick is so savage you can barely inhale again afterward.

But he isn't saying anything.

"Yo, Dirk. Earth to Di-Stri. Fight's over already." Wheezing, scratchy. "Say uncle already so we can get a move on, man."

"Pick up the _FUCKING SWORD!_ "

This is definitely the first time you've ever heard Dirk Strider lose his cool.

"Nope, that fight's been over for a while, and I won this one, so say uncle. I wanna hear you _say_ it."

"You didn't win _anything_ ," he says, and when he kicks you in the ribs this time, you can hear something crack and your vision goes black and white and iridescent for a second.

"Just say uncle, dude, this shit's gettin' old faster than milk somebody forgot to keep cold."

You lose track of time as he beats on you, bruising your chest, gut, arms, legs, and every time you catch your breath you say the same thing.

"Say uncle."

After the sixth time, you can hear him moving away, a thud as he collapses to the ground, a loud scraping clank as his katana smacks against the AC unit. Your head is swimming -- hell, your head's drowning in the Marianas fucking Trench -- but you manage to get your eyes open and move just enough to see him. He's making this weird chuffing sound, face in his hands.

 _Break him_ , Bro told you, so you do.

"I said... say... uncle," you manage one last time, and there's silence.

"... Uncle. Fucking _uncle_ , are you happy now? Are you fucking _happy?_ " His voice comes out trembling and weird and his breath hitches every time he inhales.

"Be happy when you start bein' yourself and not a piss-poor copy of Bro," you mumble. "'member when we were real little, usin' those shinai to get the basics down, I was just learning how to mix and, and you had that fuckin' robot thing goin' on. What happened to that? You built a workin' robot when you were ten years old and now what've you got left? You threw away your life, man. And... I don't know. I guess I miss the real you. You even know who the real you is anymore? 'Cause I sure don't."

He doesn't say a word.

"Love you, bro," you mumble, "so come home already," and you're only half-awake to hear him fall apart. Never thought you'd hear a Strider make a sound like a little kid seein' Bambi's mom get shot for the first time. Sure as hell never thought you'd pass out, bit by bit, to the growing rake of your brother's sobs.

And suddenly you're in a hospital bed, complete with all those IVs and shit just like in the movies, it's crazy, doctors are fuckin' everywhere, total madhouse. There's a note pinned to the wall by the bed that you don't notice for a long time. _You too,_ it says, and under that, in a shaky hand, _I'm sorry._

When you make it back to the apartment Bro's chilling on one side of the couch. It's basically crazy how good it feels to be here again after a week of nothing, and when you slump down next to him you see that the TV's on, showing the title screen of a video game and a blinking cursor next to RESUME CO-OP CAMPAIGN.

"Kick some ass with me, lil' man?" You look over at Bro, who's expressionless like always.

" _Hell_ yeah."

The next time that either of you sees Dirk Strider, you're eighteen years old and the solar system is soaked with blood.

 

* * *

 

_the coupe's been fled to recoup on these boots of lead_

_can't hear the primal screams or see through the red_

_i represent the late bloomers with great rumors to spread_

_sage francis - say uncle_


End file.
